Public 'don't believe' climate change?
Jul 6 2007 09:51
Quote:
a Royal Society poll which suggests the public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6704&&&edition=2&ttl=20070706104209
now i can believe people are a) suspicious of believing anything the government says and b) suspicious of being told to change their lifestyles by millionaire fuckwits - but do people actually disbelieve climate change?
some of the comments on the have your say are mental, and make an excellent case for why science is not and shouldn't be democratic ('i think it's overpopulation, we should put sanctions on africa' - 'the climate changed before humans therefore humans can't possibly cause climate change' etc), but have your says are usually full of the most opinionated mentalists since they're a self-selecting sample ...
Jul 6 2007 09:58
#2
yeah that's true, when they do a telephone poll of 1000 people, that means 1000 people who said 'ok', another 1000 could have not bothered meaning '50% of people support such and such' is really 25%. sells papers though.
i was stopped in the street in brighton by a BBC person before the last elections and asked if i'd do some questions, first one was 'do you know who you are going to vote for?' and i said 'none of them' and that was the end. i asked if they recorded that and they didn't, they were only interested in the opinions of 'voters.' then they report that support for the whatever party is at X%, ignoring the 40%+ who don't bother at all.
Jul 7 2007 19:39
#3
Jul 7 2007 19:40
#4
I think it's the final word on the matter. Global warming is a scam sos the ruling class can lower our standard of living and produce hysteria.
Jul 7 2007 19:49
#5
daniel stop talking shite!
Jul 7 2007 20:16
#6
Didn't a number of the scientists who spoke on that documentary claim that their views were systematically misrepresented and interviews with them were edited to cut out anything they said which was inconvenient to the makers?
Jul 7 2007 21:16
#7
the global warming deniers in the USA -- a tiny minority of climate scientists -- are usually funded by the fossil fuel corporations. capitalism systematically ignores non-market costs, and this is precisely the source of the degradation of the eco-system. global warming is just one part of this. cost-shifting by corporations tends to lead to denials about the harm done -- the long denial that tobacco smoking caused cancer, the long denials about black lung and brown lung, the denials about carpal tunnel syndrome due to overwork and poor work equipment design, etc. the denials about global warming fit into this pattern.
Jul 7 2007 21:58
#8
madashell wrote:
Didn't a number of the scientists who spoke on that documentary claim that their views were systematically misrepresented and interviews with them were edited to cut out anything they said which was inconvenient to the makers?
yeah, e.g. see http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13/channel-4s-problem-with-science/
Jul 7 2007 22:59
#9
Joseph K. wrote:
but have your says are usually full of the most opinionated mentalists since they're a self-selecting sample ...
I'm pretty sure there's a second selection by BBC editors which makes it even worse. There was a study where they posted 40 comments, and only 21 got in, 20 were from one side of whatever debate it was.
More here:
Jul 8 2007 22:50
#10
madashell wrote:
Didn't a number of the scientists who spoke on that documentary claim that their views were systematically misrepresented and interviews with them were edited to cut out anything they said which was inconvenient to the makers?
I dunno. Is that true?
Jul 8 2007 22:54
#11
Yeah, it is daniel.
Jul 8 2007 22:58
#12
Hmmm... well the evidence presented (eg that carbon rates follow climate as opposed to the other way round) were understandable and made sense to me. I'm not a scientist but the fact that its only been getting hotter since the 70s means something. Why'd it get colder during the Post-War Economic Boom eh? don't figure.
Jul 8 2007 22:59
#13
I think its a inner misanthropy within people that makes them wanna feel guilty for global climate change. we live in a guilt-plagued society. as Alexander Cockburn said, are todays carbon taxes yesterdays holy indulgences?
Jul 8 2007 23:03
#14
Oh my god.
Jul 8 2007 23:13
#15
Quote:
Daniel: "I'm not a scientist but the fact that its only been getting hotter since the 70s means something. Why'd it get colder during the Post-War Economic Boom eh? don't figure."
Sulphate Aerosol
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulate#Sulphate_aerosol)
Global temperature has increased for all of the last 100 years, it has never decreased to below its 1900 level, but has sometimes dipped in one year or a couple of years to below the level it was say five years previously.
Jul 8 2007 23:24
#16
daniel, a lot of these scientists sound plausible, doesn't mean that they are telling the truth.
Carbon dioxide levels do follow temperature in one sense, as the seas heat up they release carbon dioxide, but the temperature rise that cause the release was caused by greenhouse gases and so although an increase in CO2 can follow a rise in temperature it does not mean that CO2 doesn't cause temperatures to rise.
One of the problems with science is that we are trained to accept what we are told because science is tru and objective, whereas science, like everything, will always, to an extent, be subject to the pressures and influences of capital.
Jul 8 2007 23:31
#17
MJ wrote:
Oh my god.
Almost as bad as anarchists supporting multi-culturalism. 
Jul 9 2007 00:07
#18
Jack wrote:
MJ wrote:
Oh my god.Almost as bad as anarchists supporting multi-culturalism.
I know you're joking but I think it was pretty well established in those threads that the "multiculturalism" as it has developed in Europe means a very different and specific set of things (support for separatism, getting "community leaders" in on policymaking, etc) than it does in the States.
Jul 9 2007 01:40
#19
This is all very well. Global warming clearly exists and there is a body of evidence to demonstrate that greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activity are a causal factor in it. The key question though is what can actually be done about it that the ruling class are not already doing. As far as I can see the only way we're going to be able to do anything about it at all is to switchover to burning far more coal with new CO2 capture technology. The ruling class however is on the case on that one. That and other stop gap measures like the Japanese dish.
Jul 9 2007 02:41
#20
MJ wrote:
Jack wrote:
MJ wrote:
Oh my god.Almost as bad as anarchists supporting multi-culturalism.
I know you're joking but I think it was pretty well established in those threads that the "multiculturalism" as it has developed in Europe means a very different and specific set of things (support for separatism, getting "community leaders" in on policymaking, etc) than it does in the States.
i would just like to say that Jack's comment made me stop dead.
i've been reading Lefort's new book, and it's been a constant theme of his for several years - bascially it says that soviet terrorism/totalitarianism was driven by the party as incarnation of the people as One. i should admit that 'party' may stop anyone who reads this from thinking it applicable. however Lefort does criticise anarchists for a similar world view [the peoiple as One]. i think this is the most vital critic of marxist anarchism today. with e.g. ping's [iirc] comment on another site to the effect that he/she supports the smoking ban:
i am intersted why it is so unthinkable that multiculturalism is unanarchist [tho i am not entirely sure what the anarchist criticism is, i assume that it involves 'dividing' the working class/culture].
to add my own observations on bulletin board anarchism: too much isn left unanswered in comments like Jack's, for anarchism to appear any more progressive than e.g. the icc's infamous tactics.
any replies welcome 
Jul 9 2007 06:22
#21
Dundee_United wrote:
That and other stop gap measures like the Japanese dish.
Sushi?
yeah daniel there is a very vocal and usually big-Oil funded lobby claiming that since the climate has always changed then people can't be to blame. however models of anthropogenic climate change include natural cycles (ice ages/thaws etc), and stuff like distance from the sun, but only fit the data when human impact is included too. so it's kind of like claiming that since people die of natural causes all the time, and have always done, that blaming the increased death rate in Iraq on the war is just crazy guilty misanthropy trying to blame people for everything.
Jul 9 2007 08:34
#22
Quote:
I think it's the final word on the matter. Global warming is a scam sos the ruling class can lower our standard of living and produce hysteria.
Even sections of the ruling class are becoming aware that without an ecology, they cannot remain rich. Given that anarchists have been stressing the ecological limits of capitalism since the 1960s, it is nice that some of the ruling class have become aware of the danger.
Saying that, any solutions suggested by the ruling class will reflect their interests and needs. That should go without saying. So their responses to a real problem will be flawed and, at best, will treat symptons rather than causes. That is why we need a revolution.
And that Channel 4 programme was a scam. The "scientists" who question the scientific consensus on climate change are generally funded by oil companies and right-wing think tanks. So, I'm guessing that big oil corporations are really seeking to increase working class living standards?
Jul 9 2007 08:58
#23
yeah this is the thing, the ruling class will try and shift the cost of climate change onto the working class, because duh, they're the ruling class. that doesn't mean they've paid off a hundred thousand scientists to falsify the data, it just means they're going to try and manage the crisis in their own interests, as is their prerogative.
it's up to us to force the costs back onto capital and to resist austerity measures on the working class that exist solely to allow industry to keep on burning fossil fuels and churning out disposable commodities,* superfluous packaging, junk mail and the like for the endless process of accumulation.
* when doing my business degree i was once told by the boss of a factory that they work on the principle of 'mean time between failures.' they know rival products are designed for a certain % to last longer than the warranty period, and they match that using the cheapest components possible. goods are built to fail (or not to fail within 12 months, but as soon thereafter as cheap components and a bell curve distribution of failures allow), and be replaced generating more sales and more accumulation (the good old M - C - M'). this guy actually thought it was irrational and stupid, but couldn't do anything about it because he had to compete.
Jul 9 2007 09:13
#24
Quote:
Dundee_United wrote: "The key question though is what can actually be done about it that the ruling class are not already doing."
Everyday every state around the world (possible exception of Denmark or Sweden) does nothing about climate chaos but futher contribute to it, case in point in this decade the Irish state was setting up new peat burning power stations, choosing to invest in new roads rather than new public transport (railways are incredibly run down here), favouring a sprawl model of development the main function of which is to make their builder buddies richer, subsidising the expansion of ariports that only deal with short haul flights like Dublin to Sligo...but oh yeah I forgot they do have nice ads telling you to switch your light bulbs off...and now we have the Green party in power at least one minister cycles to his office. Sorted so eh?
This isn't a 'problem' of which perhaps there can be discussion about a solution, this is a drunk man in a rapidly
accelerating car heading for a cliff face...and this has been the case for twenty years....human induced climate change has been very 'mainstream' and well known about since around 1988.....and nothing has changed since then bar a few reports and Kyoto which is incredibly weak in terms of reductions and I think hinges on carbon trading possible because of industrial collapse in Russia.
The 'magic bullet' of a technical fix is every bit as ideological as the "green consumerism" of buying a fold up bike for 500 euros (which is not to say that either new technologies or new patterns of consumption are not needed)....both are there to quietly hush you 'don't worry it is under control'....the only solution is a society based on use value rather than exchange value hence not based on constant growth and ignoring 'externalities' such as pollution, possibly coupled with a changed view of 'nature' and our place in it.
Jul 9 2007 09:48
#25
daniel wrote:
I think it's the final word on the matter. Global warming is a scam sos the ruling class can lower our standard of living and produce hysteria.
That's absolute rubbish.
daniel wrote:
Hmmm... well the evidence presented (eg that carbon rates follow climate as opposed to the other way round) were understandable and made sense to me. I'm not a scientist
Hmmm...
I mean it's really not complicated. CO2 is an insulator, the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere the hotter everything will get. Increased temperature also causes more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere in a variety of ways, from the sea, from bacteria in soil in forests, etc. so the whole problem snowballs.
Quote:
but the fact that its only been getting hotter since the 70s means something.
As pointed out, that's wrong.
Quote:
Why'd it get colder during the Post-War Economic Boom eh? don't figure.
Man made climate change occurs on top of all natural variations which happen anyway, like changes in the sun, weather patterns, etc. It might get cooler for a couple of days in July but it doesn't mean the overall trend is it gets hotter through till August.
Jul 9 2007 10:05
#26
It is sulphate aerosols, aka air pollution, aka global dimming, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
This caused a reduction in the overall trend of year on year increased global temperatures in the 1950s, and 1960s, global temperatures were still increased over 1900 though. This doesn't make global warming less of a problem it makes it probably more of one as it means that perhaps even the sort of economic collapse that could be caused by climate chaos would in fact contribute to more global warming in the short term by making the sources of global dimming idle.
This is well known about, not some secret in the cupboard no one but your brave Exxon-Mobil funded 'peer review what's dat!?!' dissidents talk about, I'm sure it is in bog standard books about climate chaos, and was of course brought into the IPCC studies (and the later tend to underestimate climate change - remember it is through an international process of consensus which governments have influence over including those of the US, and Saudi Arabia).
Jul 9 2007 10:50
#27
Was there not a thread on here before on Living Marxism? Can't seem to find it, seems pretty mad. I'll try searching RCP.
Jul 9 2007 16:37
#28
you lot make a good argument, i'll have to review my facts then won't i?
Jul 10 2007 02:30
#29
daniel wrote:
you lot make a good argument, i'll have to review my facts then won't i?
Or you could take a trip to New Orleans. Folks know a bit about climate change there, it destroyed the fucking city.
Jul 10 2007 10:49
#30
Catch 22 wrote:
Or you could take a trip to New Orleans. Folks know a bit about climate change there, it destroyed the fucking city.
Well that's a bit of a simplification there...
daniel wrote:
you lot make a good argument, i'll have to review my facts then won't i?
Assuming you're not being sarcy, I hope you do, because man made climate change is undeniable. The oil lobby and big business tried to fund denier scientists but they've been crushed by overwhelming peer reviewed scientific evidence. Now it's been agreed by pretty much everyone, the bosses are trying to pass the cost on to us, so this is the new terrain for struggle (reduced bin collections, bin/water charges, fines, "green" taxes, etc.)
To a lesser extent all opinion polls are polls of people who answer opinion polls. Lots of people never do.
Devrim